Fans bid farewell to beloved Mexican comic 'Chespirito'

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Thousands of fans bid a final farewell to beloved Mexican actor and screenwriter Roberto Gomez Bolanos at a large-scale memorial in Mexico City on Sunday.

Gomez Bolanos, known as "Chespirito," a word play on 'Little Shakespeare' for his diminutive stature and his prolific scripts, died at his home in Cancun on Friday age 85.

Fans, many of them young children, brought white flowers and balloons to a mass held at the Azteca national soccer stadium where for hours they sang tributes to him and performed Mexican waves.

Entire families dressed up in the costumes of his most enduring comic characters, such as "El Chapulin Colorado" (The Red Grasshopper) which inspired Bumblebee Man, the Spanish-speaking character from the U.S. animated sitcom The Simpsons.

Gomez Bolanos, whose shows are still aired regularly although he stopped recording material in the 1980s, was on Saturday honored at the offices of broadcaster Grupo Televisa, for which he had worked most of his career.